A selection of weekly articles by top Bahamian commentators.

November 2012

November 24, 2012

In the embarrassing climb-down that is his most recent flip-flop on gambling, the Prime Minister desperately sought to make a virtue out of his incompetence and bungling, and that his government likely lacked the legal authority to proceed with a vote that it probably would have lost:

“I am a Prime Minister who listens. And in listening to the still evolving public discourse on the forthcoming referendum it has become clear to me that more time is needed before the Bahamian people are called upon to vote.

“I am supported in this view by the leadership of a broad cross-section of the national community with whom I have been consulting over the past few days.”

That Christie believes that voters are gullible enough to believe such balderdash speaks to his contempt for the common sense of those who see through the farce he is attempting to perpetuate in this whole numbers business. His attempt to describe his latest flip-flop as listening must be an inside joke.

There are reports of private polling to gauge whether the December 3 poll should have been postponed. One wonders whether this figured into its postponement.

Christie may have been listening, but was it mostly to narrow interests who may funnel campaign contributions to his party, as well as those who gave him stunningly poor advice?

November 20, 2012

Grouper is the highest-priced and most popular food fish in the Bahamas. So you'd think it would be in our best interest to keep it around for the pot, and for the livelihood of fishermen.

The only one way to do that is by not fishing it to extinction. But that's exactly what's happening, despite protections such as a closed season that were recently introduced. Some are now calling for these protections to be lifted, so they can exploit this tasty fish in a way that will inevitably lead to its disappearance from our menus.

To fully appreciate why this is the case, you have to understand the grouper's life cycle.

They don't reach sexual maturity until they are at least five years old, or about 20 inches long. They can grow up to three feet, weigh up to 55 pounds, and survive for 20 years or more in the wild, but fishing targets larger individuals with the highest reproductive capacity and skews the population to juveniles.

So the first point to appreciate is that a slow reproductive rate makes this species vulnerable to over-exploitation because they can't replace the population fast enough to compensate. In fact, several species of grouper are already endangered, including the Nassau grouper, our favourite culinary ingredient.

But the way that groupers reproduce makes them even more vulnerable. Every year these normally solitary fish migrate as far as 100 miles to a few specific areas to mate in large groups around the time of the winter full moons. Historically, such spawning aggregations have included more than 100,000 individuals.

That makes them easy targets for fishermen, who often know where and when the aggregations occur, and who remove the most fertile individuals. This results in substantially fewer fish in the next generation. In many instances, entire stocks have been wiped out due to intense fishing pressure at spawning aggregations.

November 19, 2012

On multiple grounds, Bahamians should roundly defeat the upcoming referendum question on legalizing web shops. First, there is a stunning and insulting lack of transparency.

Moreover, the PLP that cried foul over a lack of process during the last referendum has been breathtakingly hypocritical and cynical in terms of the lack of process in its rush to give certain numbers houses an early Christmas gift. This referendum involves both a perceived conflict of interest and a betrayal of the common good.

A part of the back-story of the PLP’s decision to hold a referendum solely on the question of legalizing the current criminal enterprise of selected web shops involves a bizarre statement recently made by Prime Minister Perry Christie.

When asked if his party accepted campaign donations from various illegal numbers houses for the recent general election, former prime minister and FNM Leader Hubert Ingraham said that while individual candidates may have, he did not accept such donations on behalf of the party.

By stunning contrast Christie said he didn’t know whether the PLP received donations from such illegal enterprises. Bahamians will have to judge whether they find credible Christie and his stated ignorance on this matter.

November 13, 2012

Well, if social media, the press and personal conversations are any guide, there has been a noticeable turn away from the previously favourable or indifferent view towards the upcoming gambling referendum on the part of most non-evangelical Bahamians.

And playing the central role in this shift has been the confusing and contradictory statements from the prime minister who, if ZNS is anything to go by, spends all his time flitting around the country making portentous and convoluted statements on every issue under the sun, as he basks in his political glory.

But supporters of the measure still believe that a well-funded campaign will carry the day. And the promotional machine funded by the web shop operators is only just beginning to kick in.

T-shirts and other paraphernalia urging a 'yes' vote are being given away in all sorts of places, from PLP block parties to government offices, and a Facebook contest has been launched offering cash prizes for videos, songs, poems and dances promoting the legalisation of web shops.

The Vote Yes campaign's Facebook page has more than 2800 fans and says it represents "the thousands of Bahamians who believe the Bahamian gaming industry is worth fighting for." It argues that too much is at stake for indifference to prevail on this issue.

November 10, 2012

International observers often worry about the centrifugal trend in many countries - the tendency of regions or ethnic groups to demand autonomy or independence, weakening the control of central governments and any “national” identity.

Just a few examples: in Spain, wealthy Catalonia is threatening to spin off; Scotland wants separation from England; the Kurds want nothing to do with greater Iraq; Nigeria is split between the Christian south and the Muslim north; tribal allegiances in Pakistan and Afghanistan shatter any hopes for unanimity.

Yesterday’s elections show the same trend in the United States. Thanks to a county-by- county map provided by the New York Times, we can see vast stretches of rural areas colored solid red, for the losing Republicans, and smaller urban zones colored blue, for the victorious Democrats. The huge preponderance of red counties nationwide did not determine the Presidential electoral votes; the key factor was the larger population in the far fewer blue counties.

Clearly there is a basic difference in political thinking between the country folk, largely white, church-going and socially conservative, and city dwellers, often mixed-race, agnostic and socially liberal. One example is the vivid split between the blue Atlantic and Pacific coastal regions on the one hand, and the overwhelmingly red Midwest, South and Mountain States on the other hand. The effect is even more striking when we look inside the heavily Democratic states of California, Washington and Oregon, which show blue counties clustered in the cities along the shore with red counties dominating the larger rural interior regions.

Many other states are likewise split internally, where geographic size does not translate into votes. Ninety percent of Nevada is colored red, but the counties with Reno and Las Vegas are blue, so the state went Democratic. In the crucial state of Ohio, red counties dominate the map, but again the lonely blue counties hold the three major cities, giving Democratic victory.

It’s also notable that within many counties the party divisions were not minor, like 53%-47% , but heavily weighted, sometimes 70%-30%, indicating intense political slant at a local. level. In three red states, like Oklahoma, one does not find a single blue county, and in two other red states only a single blue county. Massachusetts, by contrast, does not show a single red county. It must be lonely to be a Democrat in Oklahoma City, or a Republican in Boston.

These sectional and ideological differences are unlikely to be as severe as the irreconcilable split over slavery that tore the nation apart into Civil War 150 years ago. But they will certainly make the country hard to govern during the next four years, with a blue-state President and Senate and a red-state House of Representatives. We should not expect an early end to the gridlock that has paralyzed crucial decision-making affecting not only the US but also The Bahamas and the rest of the world.

November 06, 2012

For the past three general elections Michael Pintard and David Wallace have put together sketch comedies lampooning the key personalities and issues in the campaigns. These side-splitting performances have played to sold-out audiences in Nassau and Freeport.

The current version is called Election 2012: What Just Happened? It explores the events and issues surrounding the most recent campaign, and effectively impersonates leading members of the PLP, the FNM and the DNA.

Pintard, the losing FNM candidate for Cat Island, San Salvador & Rum Cay in the last election, took some barbs himself. For example, recalling an actual stump speech, David Wallace (the Hubert Ingraham impersonator) declared dramatically "Pintard, I'm sending you on a mission! Only it's a one-way mission, heh, heh."

Christie ("who had the shuffle kicked out of him in 2007"), was brilliantly impersonated by Will Stubbs. It's relatively easy to imitate HAI because of his speech impediment and the fact that he actually has a sense of humour. But it's a rather more complex task to attempt the same with Christie. Nevertheless, Stubbs managed to pull it off brilliantly.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate Bran McCartney, impersonated by Tawari Rodgers, was only a bit player, which belied the DNA's key role in Ingraham's demise.

Both Wallace and Pintard are losing FNM candidates (although Wallace won West End and Bimini in the 1997 FNM wipeout of the PLP). Pintard, who lost in May by only 85 votes to now Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis, conceded that the play had been delayed this election cycle because it had taken him longer to heal.

Arguably, the star of the show was Marquita Whymns, who (among other characters) portrayed the archetypal Haitian-Bahamian matriarch, Marie, cleverly massaging both Obie Wilcombe and Pakeshia Edgecombe. After assuring both Grand Bahama candidates of unswerving loyalty, she turned to her dissolute Bahamian husband and declared "We deliver same as repatriate".

The three-hour performance on Saturday (at the so-called National Centre for the Performing Arts) was sold out and the audience appeared hugely entertained by even the most banal jokes. The opening scene - featuring the "roads dem, dig up, dig up" - proved especially energising.

Aside from a few technical difficulties, like delayed musical prompts and a non-functioning stage curtain, the performance is well worth the $25 ticket price. Extra shows are being scheduled for this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so you still have a chance to get in on the action.

A group of top scientists descended on the College of the Bahamas last week for a symposium to commemorate the 30th anniversary of a monumental book on the Bahamas. However, it's a safe bet that most Bahamians have never even heard of that book, much less scanned its pages.

The publication being honoured was Flora of the Bahama Archipelago, authored in 1982 by the American botanist Dr Donovan Correll and his wife Helen, who spent seven years collecting plants throughout the islands. Their 1692-page tome includes hundreds of painstakingly drawn pen and ink illustrations by Priscilla Fawcett. Publication was sponsored by Miami's Fairchild Tropical Garden.

Founded in 1938, the Fairchild Garden is both a world class visitor attraction and a centre for education and research. From the plant exploration done in support of the Correll book, Fairchild developed the most extensive living collection of Bahamian plants outside of the islands. You can see them today in a three-acre plot just off Old Cutler Road in Coral Gables, where more than 138 species collected from the Bahamas are happily growing.

The Correll book superseded the first comprehensive record of Bahamian plant life. The Bahama Flora was produced in 1920 by Nathaniel Britton of the New York Botanical Garden andCharles Millspaugh of Chicago's Field Museum. It described more than 1900 species that had been collected over the two centuries since Captain Thomas Walker sent the very first specimens of Bahamian plants to England in 1703.

November 03, 2012

A perennial conceit of the present is ignorance of history, giving rise to feckless commentary, including purposely mischievous or slipshod editorializing and news analysis.

The current conceit concerns the supposed terminal illness of the Free National Movement. One oft-pontificating prelate questions the FNM’s survival, especially given, in his opinion, that it is a coalition of interests. What studied ignorance.

The FNM overcame the 25-year reign of Sir Lynden Pindling. It is resilient, demonstrating the ability to take a cut in the posterior and bounce back. Moreover, political parties are typically coalitions of various interests.

Undeniably, these are challenging times for the FNM following electoral loss and the departure from frontline politics of the Delivery Boy who first led it to office. Still, one wishes that more of our professional opinion-makers and political journalists might seed and flavour their analysis with historical perspective beyond the limited horizon of the daily news.